Media tycoon, Robert Maxwell during a press conference months before his suspicious death, on 30th April 1991 in London, England. Ian Robert Maxwell, MC (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch; (1923-1991) was a British media proprietor and Member of Parliament (MP). Originally from Czechoslovakia, he rose from poverty to build an extensive publishing empire. After Maxwell's death in November that year, huge discrepancies in his companies' finances were revealed, including his fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror Group pension fund.